To all the Math people, why do you like math? What makes you interested in it and why is it enjoyable to you?

There's so many ways I could answer this question but I think the main reason I love math is that it is true.

Think about any other subject - can you ever prove, beyond any doubt whatsoever - that a piece of "knowledge" is true?
There have been countless instances where a scientifically accepted theory is overruled by new evidence.
This is not a bad thing - it simply reflects the way science is done, that is to say, empirically.

On the other hand, mathematics is provable knowledge. Yes, we have to assume axioms, and create definitions, etc., but within this framework mathematics is consistent.
And I think that's really neat. It feels like building a machine, slowly tacking on more and more parts (i.e., theorems) and growing our knowledge, which we can then smash against problems both internal and external to mathematics.

Descartes' Discourse on the Method discusses this to some extent. I really recommend it if you haven't read it.

Too bad ZFC is complete BS. Otherwise your life wouldn't have been a complete waste of time.

If you dislike ZFC, there are plenty of other foundations to choose from. However ZFC is widely accepted and hence the most developed.

Like I mentioned, we do have to accept certain axioms, but if you've read them they are quite reasonable.

My stance is not that mathematics is some deep truth about reality, but rather that it is true within the "initial conditions" we give it, which, surprisingly, corresponds frequently to nature.

>corresponds frequently to nature.
well it is not that, it is that some humans claim that they see a similarity between their toy ''models'' and what they read on their tools outputting numbers, sometimes it is with what they indeed experience.

Math is abstract truth which is both capable of being used in concrete, useful ways, and which is simultaneously capable of being appreciated on an aesthetic level. It also has the added advantage of having earned its keep as being "unreasonably useful" in the real hard sciences, as has been observed.

Mathematics, as opposed to philosophy (which by its nature is more obliged to entertain bullshit) or some corresponding thing in some other direction (physics? politics) /perfectly straddles the speculative and the real in order to present useful, beautiful abstract truth/. Nothing else comes close. Better still, there are /surprising/ and /simple/ results, and plenty of undiscovered shit (check the wiki on unsolved math problems!)

You should be absolutley amazed, for example, at brouwer's fixed point theorem as it has a concrete application in the real world. Or at the simple fact that definite integrals of elementary functions frequently evaluate to simple expression at all. Magnets, man. Fucking miracles.

Not really, you can use many things in Mathematics to directly form and predict nature.

I like it cause the truth is the truth. Math results don't change. I also like it cause all you need is your mind and nothing else. Applying mathematics succesfully for real problems also feels really good.

I think it started when I was a little kid. I was lazy, awkward, and unpopular.
> Teacher, user doesn't hold his pencil correctly!
> user, you write the wrong way!
> You just don't care, do you user?

I was and still am lazy. I did not do my homework. Math I only did because it could be done during class... numbers are less writing than words.

In the third grade, they handed out a simple math puzzler test. I did it, liked it, and got the highest score in the school. They announced my name during the morning announcements. That was long ago but I still remember. In that moment, I was the best in the school. The kid that never got picked in gym was on the top.

As I got older, I continued to think of myself as a vanguard in math. In the middle school, I realized the distributive property of multiplication on my own and thought I would become famous. When it was taught in the next section it was humbling but at least I was confident I was smarter than the rest of the class.

I started reading math books for fun. I wanted to grow up to be like Turing, Gauss, and Einstein. I wanted to be the best in my time.

Over time I grew to appreciate the universality of mathematical truth and its platonic beauty, but really it just comes down to the fact that math is the subject was the subject with the least amount of tedium, and that specialized it for me.

My fellow negro, that's how I did it too.

>but really it just comes down to the fact that math is the subject was the subject with the least amount of tedium
this is the real reason for everyone